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SEO for beginners training – Module 1.3 

The Yoast SEO plugin 


In this lesson, we’ll give you a brief overview of what the Yoast SEO 
plugin actually does. We’ll talk to you about the functionalities of the free 
version of the plugin, and after that, we’ll discuss the features of Yoast 
SEO Premium. We’ll also explain what the plugin can’t do, and therefore, 
you should do yourself. Finally, we’ll give you a few possible reasons for 
why your site may not rank, even though you have optimized it with 
Yoast SEO. 
 

What does Yoast SEO do? 


Suppose you know nothing about SEO, but you have heard about this 
little gem called Yoast SEO. People have told you that it is a very 
convenient tool to optimize your site and its pages for Google, Bing, and 
Yandex. It’s effortless. You want to use it. You install the Yoast SEO 
plugin and simply follow the advice given in that plugin. Within a week, 
your website will be topping the charts in Google. Or not? No, to be 
honest. It’s not that simple. Our plugin helps you to optimize your 
website for search engines. And it does that well, but it needs your input. 
 

Key features of the Yoast SEO plugin 


Yoast SEO makes working on your SEO easy. We aim to help you with it, 
step by step. Let’s discuss the most important features of the Yoast SEO 
plugin: 
 
● Keyphrase optimization 
Keyphrase optimization is our most important feature. It enables 
you to optimize a post or a page for a specific keyphrase (or 
keyword). You can insert the focus keyphrase you want to 
optimize for, and the plugin tells you if you have used that focus 
keyphrase the right way in that specific post. Keep in mind that 
the focus keyphrase does not give any information to Google, it’s 
just meant to help you create a post that is well-written and 

 

 

optimized for search engines. 


 

Image 1: Focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO 


 

● Readability analysis 
Writing ​readable blog posts​ is an essential part of every SEO 
strategy, so we also provide a convenient readability analysis for 
you. The readability analysis gives you advice on how to make 
your copy not only easily readable for your audience, but for 
Google as well. 
 

Image 2: Readability analysis 


 
● Snippet preview 
The Yoast SEO plugin comes with a handy snippet preview, which 

 

 

will show you what your page will look like in the search results. It 
not only shows you a preview of the page title and meta 
description but also allows you to optimize them per individual 
page or post.  
 

Image 3: Snippet preview 

 
● Breadcrumbs 
Our plugin gives you full control over your breadcrumbs. 
Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look 
like ‘Home » SEO blog » Content SEO’. They allow users to easily 
navigate your site and make it easier for search engines to 
determine the structure of your site. 
 

 

 

Image 4: Breadcrumbs 

● Canonical URLs 
Another cool feature in Yoast SEO enables you to set canonical 
URLs. The same content on your site may be available on various 
URLs. To avoid confusing Google (and the user), you can tell 
search engines which URL you want Google to index. 
 
● Technical configuration 
Yoast SEO also handles the technical configuration of your site for 
search engines. For example, our plugin takes care of robots.txt, 
the .htaccess files, clean permalink URLs and XML sitemaps.  
 

Key features of the Yoast SEO Premium plugin 


We’ve seen that the free version of Yoast SEO is already awesome, so why 
should you buy Yoast SEO Premium? If you’re really serious about SEO, 
this is the plugin you should have. We’ll discuss the most important 
features you’ll get when you buy the premium version. 
 
● Support 
When you buy Yoast SEO Premium, you get access to our 
awesome support team. This means you can send us an email at 
any time with questions about the setup and basic use of the 
plugin. 
 
● Word forms 
The premium plugin recognizes several types of word forms, like 
singulars, plurals, comparatives, and past tense. This makes the 
analysis that much stronger, as it now takes the different forms 
you use into account. For example, words like ‘books’, ‘booking’, 
‘booked’, and ‘bookly’, are all recognized as forms of ‘book’. 
 
● Synonyms 
There’s no more need to repeatedly use your keyphrase 
throughout the text too much, as you can now use synonyms. If 
you’re optimizing for ‘ballet shoes’, just add ‘dancing shoes’ to 
its synonyms in Yoast SEO and those mentions will also be 

 

 

counted. The recognition of synonyms and word forms helps you 


write readable, understandable, and findable texts! 
 
● Social previews 
With Yoast SEO Premium you can check what your post will look 
like on Facebook or Twitter, without even going to these channels. 
While working on your post you can just go to the Yoast SEO meta 
box, upload the image you’d like to show, and make sure it will 
look fine. 
 

Image 5: Social previews


 
● Related keyphrases 
With the free version of our plugin, you can choose one focus 
keyphrase to optimize your text for. However, it might help to 
make your post or page rank for that focus keyphrase by 
strengthening it with other, closely related topics. In, Yoast SEO 
Premium, you can add up to four related keyphrases. Use them, as 
Google is getting better at recognizing relationships between 

 

 

words and topics. 


 
● Internal linking tool 
With our internal linking tool, it’s super easy to link to related 
posts. The tool shows you which posts are related to the one 
you’re working on, so you can easily structure your content. This 
way, you can show both Google and your users which posts are 
related, and which are most important. 
 

Image 6: Internal linking tool 


 

● Content insights 
Yoast SEO Premium tells you the words or word combinations 
that appear most often in your text. Use this feature to check if 
your text is optimized for the right keyphrases. You may get 
valuable insights when a different word keeps popping up or you 
could notice a new combination of words. 

 

 

 
Image 7: Content insights 

 
● Redirect manager  
When expanding your site, you’re bound to run into cases where 
you’re deleting pages, moving pages, changing URLs for 
categories, etc. All these changes can cause problems when you’re 
not properly redirecting the old URLs to new ones. Our redirect 
manager can help you solve all these issues and more. 
 
● Ad-free 
Last but not least, the premium version of Yoast SEO is 
completely ad-free. 
 

What can’t Yoast SEO do: what should I do? 


Our plugin helps you to optimize your website for search engines. And it 
does that well, but it needs your input. So, what are the things you should 
do yourself in order to optimize your site for search engines? 
 
1. The first thing you need to do is c
​ onfigure the plugin​ in the right 
way. The settings should be in line with your website. The 
configuration wizard helps you to easily configure your site, to 

 

 

have the optimal SEO settings. 


 
2. In addition, you should execute ​keyphrase research​. This is the 
most important part of your SEO strategy because you should 
optimize your site for the right words. You need to get inside the 
heads of your audience, to find out which words people are 
searching for. Next, you should know your competition and 
estimate your chances to rank, because if you’re optimizing for a 
term that’s really competitive, you won’t get any traffic. 
 
3. You should ​write awesome content​. This is not something we can 
do for you, this has to be done manually. However, the plugin 
helps you to write SEO-friendly and readable texts, by carrying 
out content and readability analyses. You can use the results of 
these analyses to make sure your text is well-optimized for 
search engines. In addition, we have also written a lot of b
​ log 
posts​ about content writing, and you can follow our S
​ EO 
copywriting training​. 
 
4. It’s very important to establish your i​ nternal linking structure 
because this helps Google understand your website. Yoast SEO can 
help you with the internal linking feature, but you have to do this 
yourself. 
 
5. An important part of your SEO strategy should be your s
​ ocial 
strategy​. Yoast SEO can help you make those posts on Facebook 
look good, but you still have to write the content and hit that 
button. 
 
6. The same goes for the ​redirects​. Yoast SEO can help you detect 
errors and automatically presents you the most common options 
of solving them. It can even fix the easiest ones. In most cases, 
however, you still have to make a choice and select the one you 
prefer. 
 
As you have seen, most of the technical stuff in the background is taken 
care of automatically. However, there are a few things our plugin cannot 

 

 

do for you: it needs your input. But we still try to help you with that, with 
our courses and blog posts. 
 

I’ve optimized my site with Yoast SEO, so why am I not 


ranking? 
The Yoast SEO plugin helps you to easily optimize your site and its pages. 
This could definitely result in higher rankings. But unfortunately, green 
bullets do not magically put you on top of the search results. We’ll 
discuss two possible reasons why a post doesn’t rank, even though it has 
been optimized with Yoast SEO. 
 
Too much competition 

In most cases, the reason a post doesn’t rank on top is that there’s simply 
too much competition. If you optimize your blog post for Justin Bieber, 
chances are high you won’t rank for that term. Too many sites and blog 
posts have established themselves in this niche. Your site doesn’t have 
the authority that some other sites do have. And a large portion of the 
other sites in this niche is probably also capable of writing SEO-friendly 
texts. 
 
If you really want to rank for those highly competitive terms, you should 
try a long tail keyphrase strategy. Blog about all the nuances and little 
variations around the competitive keyphrases. If these long tail articles 
start ranking, you’ll be able to rank for more competitive terms as well. 
Such a strategy requires long-term efforts, but in the end, it will pay off. 
 

A lack of patience 

At Yoast, we propose a holistic SEO strategy, in which you have to be the 


best result. When you’re just starting out, you’re probably not the best 
result yet. Unfortunately, SEO is a long-term strategy. You just need to 
have a little patience. Try to focus on all aspects of website optimization, 
try to ​be​ that best result. It will pay off eventually! 
 

 

 

Conclusion 
In this lesson, we’ve talked about the features of the Yoast SEO plugin for 
WordPress. You’ve seen that the features of the free version are already 
awesome, but when you buy Yoast SEO Premium, you get even more! If 
you’re serious about SEO, features like (multiple) focus keyphrase 
optimization, breadcrumbs, the internal linking tool, and the redirect 
manager will save you a lot of time. But remember: the plugin cannot do 
everything for you, it needs your input. 

 
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